This article was produced in collaboration with Met and was first published in Rouleur Issue 140
“Everything you see here, all the new products we’ve brought in the last seven years of collaboration, this is why UAE chooses us,” says Met’s marketing manager Achille Montanelli with a sweep of his arm. “They are not looking for money – they already have strong sponsorship. They choose the product that works best.”
We’re standing in the room in Met’s Talamona HQ that houses the Tube, the name given to its new wind tunnel. It’s a large, futuristic-looking capsule on stilts – a room within a room. There’s a door at the back, accessed via metal steps, and it’s theatrically dark inside. The walls are painted black and the light comes from square spotlights in the ceiling. In the centre is a single white helmet on a plinth, like a cyber-Yorick’s skull waiting for Hamlet – or Tadej maybe – to pick it up. We’re talking quietly, as if we’re waiting for the performance to start.
And then it does. Not Hamlet, or Tadej, but Met’s senior engineer, Matteo Tenni, steps forward, flicks a switch – or clicks a button on the computer software – and there’s a rushing, whistling sound as the turbine initialises, gets up to speed and starts to move air through the chamber, over and through the helmet, as the four screens in front of Tenni display data about its performance during the minute-long run.
It is a rehearsal: Tenni is demonstrating how Met uses the Tube to conduct thermal analysis, or how effectively a helmet’s vents work. The helmet is strapped to a cast aluminium, copper-coloured head-form – a dummy head – which contains 32 sensors. The head-form is heated up to 38°C, the temperature of the human body under strain, and turned to face a wind that emulates racing speed. The turbine whirls and the sensors relay the exact temperatures at each point on the head as it cools down in the airflow. The helmet’s angle of attack and the wind speed can be adjusted to replicate a range of conditions, and this allows Met to check how each individual vent or channel works, or how quickly the whole head itself cools.
The other function of the wind tunnel is of course aerodynamic testing, and the Tube is designed to be able to test helmets in isolation on a plinth, as well as on real riders with their bikes.
“What is unique with the Tube is that the same facility has those three features – thermal, aerodynamic head and complete bike testing,” says Tenni. “There are plenty of good facilities for testing separately, but not all in the same place, and that’s what we wanted to achieve.”
Measuring down to the tiniest details is crucial for smaller objects such as helmets, and a unique aspect that Tenni says allows Met to fine-tune helmet design with even greater precision is the speed at which the Tube can move the airflow. “We have a 110-kilowatt turbine,” he says, “equal to 150 horsepower. This allows it to push the air at 100kph. We decided to keep a margin over the maximum 60 or 70kph that is usually used for testing, because we wanted to have the possibility to find very tiny differences. With higher speeds you start seeing differences and you can work backwards from that. With helmets, sometimes I go to 80kph because I want to see a bigger gap between different prototypes, but with riders 60kph is the maximum for safety reasons,” he says. “For the initial calibration when the tunnel was first built, we had to run the instruments at 100kph and you couldn’t stand up!”
It’s not unheard of for a brand to have its own in-house wind tunnel. Specialized, for example, has its ‘Win Tunnel’ in Morgan Hill, California. But for Met, a relatively small brand that exclusively produces helmets, it’s definitely unusual. Why did Met decide it was worth the considerable investment?
“The helmet now is one of the most important, influential pieces of equipment,” says Montanelli. “In the WorldTour, positions are more and more aggressive and the speeds higher, so the influence of the helmet on aerodynamic performance is much more relevant. Additionally, speaking with the UAE team, they’re saying that the bikes are now so advanced that it’s difficult to find as many gains, so the focus is more on the rest of the equipment and the position, especially the helmet. So we asked them, based on their experience, what help did they need to create a perfect testing scenario for their needs? We already worked with them on product development in the velodrome; with a wind tunnel it’s completing the circle. We have the chance to make something that allows the rider to perform better.”
Tenni continues: “We can help them optimise their positions with helmets more than before, even down to testing the straps. Sometimes I see pro riders wearing helmets with a couple of fingers’ space under the chin or behind the ears. They need to follow the shape of your face as closely as possible, or at 50kph they become a braking system, not a retention system. One of the guys at UAE was here a few weeks ago. He asked if we could adjust his straps – they were not symmetrical and too loose. And of course in the case of a crash it’s the straps that are keeping the helmet on your head.” Tenni didn’t mention whether he or his team had ever given Pogačar advice about – or tested – the now-famous tufts of golden hair that can usually be seen protruding through the vents of his Trenta 3K carbon and blowing in the wind. Some things are unbroachable.
The Tube became fully operational around a year ago, Tenni says. It took around a year to calibrate it, which involved a review of the sensors and scales – “a lot of work” – and then in 2024 the team could start using it to develop real products. “The new Met Trenta 3K is the son of this,” he says proudly. As the man behind the Tube project he’s claiming paternity.
“We used the previous Trenta 3K as the baseline and asked, what can we optimise here? For sure that helmet had good ventilation, but now, with the Tube, we could push to the extreme level of making sure the airflow is entering each vent with a free path to the tail. This is due in part to the increase in performance of the outlet. There is a direct relationship between the performance of the outlets, the temperature of the head and athletic performance.”
The new Trenta 3K, which Pogačar used to win the 2025 Tour de France and Elisa Longo Borghini wore to victory into the Giro d’Italia Women, is 16 per cent better ventilated than the previous version, according to Met’s data, while it performed 40 per cent better in Virginia Tech’s impact tests – the world’s most recognised safety testing protocol – gaining a five-star rating and one of the best scores ever recorded. It features Met’s 3K Airframe, a carbon fibre wing structure that eliminates EPS from the internal frame, resulting in a continuous internal air channel, uninterrupted from the front intake to the rear exhaust, which ensures consistent airflow at both high and low speeds.
But, with aero equipment increasingly employed even for mountain stages – Pogačar used the Colnago Y1Rs and the Met Manta aero helmet to win the Tour de France’s uphill time trial – is there a possibility that riders will still choose the Met Manta aero helmet over the Trenta 3K even though the latter is better ventilated?
“The Trenta 3K is only slightly slower than the Manta,” says Tenni. “At the beginning of March in the Classics, the pro teams will use the Manta. In May, in early summer temperatures at the Giro, where there’s climbing, it’s a tough decision. But in the Tour de France in July at 40 degrees, legs will stay fresher with better ventilation – and the Trenta 3K is the most ventilated road helmet ever.”
The science tells us that as core temperature increases, heart rate drifts upwards and eventually limits power. Teams are now talking of cooling as the next marginal gain. “Even if it’s two or three watts, that’s still interesting for the pro riders,” says Tenni. “If you need ventilation, it’s our challenge to make it perform erodynamically.” The new Trenta 3K’s aerodynamic performance is unchanged compared with the previous version, but it boasts that extra 16 per cent in ventilation and 40 per cent in linear and rotational safety. That’s what’s called wind tunnel validation.
Catching the Tube
And now it’s my turn. Tenni has set up a UAE team-issue Colnago TT1 inside the Tube and I’m going to ride it wearing the new, unreleased Met Drone III Wide Body time trial helmet and a Pissei skinsuit similar to the pro version. It’s not the first time I’ve been in a wind tunnel: I took my own TT bike and set-up to the Silverstone Sports Engineering Hub in 2021 and was a little disappointed with my CdA. It was 0.23 if you’re drag curious. So I clack up the metal steps like an astronaut in tap-dancing shoes, settle myself on the Colnago in my best Pogi position, dip my head, clip in and start pedalling at a preset 200 watts, not hard, but supplying enough resistance to replicate real riding. Tenni turns on the turbine. “What do you want?” he had asked me before the run. “0.19,” I replied. Almost all pros are more aero than this – as low as 0.15 – but for a more mature rider who isn’t as flexible, this would be pretty good. The wind rushes at 50kph, I try to keep still and stay inside the blue outline around my head and body on the screen just within my vision.
The result: 0.2047. Tantalisingly close and not bad considering the bike is not mine and is in no way optimised for me. “The product needs to be closer to your shoulders without a gap,” Tenni says as we prepare for the second run. He adjusts the position of the helmet on my head very slightly and, doing my bit, I shrug and try to be more turtle-like as the wind starts to rush again. This time it’s 0.2005 and we’re so close to my dream aero. “Okay, this time really shrug!” he urges. “Keep the product touching your back.” For the third run I can almost taste the magic 0.19 through the wind blasting over my mouth and nose, but just once or twice I shuffle forward on the saddle to compensate for weakening shoulder and neck muscles and the Tube finds me out – this third run is 0.2024, only very slightly better than the first baseline run.
The point of all this was not to show off how aerodynamic the Drone III is, but how the wind tunnel can bring a level of minute detail to Met’s in-house testing that was previously unobtainable. And it said to me that I needed to update my TT bike, skinsuit, helmet and position – and maybe do some stretching.
TALAMONA TALENT
The 125-kilometre drive to Met’s HQ from Milan Malpensa airport gets more picturesque the further it goes. At Lecco you turn left and trace the length of Lake Como’s eastern shore. Then, heading east towards Talamona, the peaks of the Italian Alps loom. The Passo di San Marco is directly above, with the Giro’s icons such as the Stelvio, Mortorola and Gavia in the distance.
The geometric lines of Met’s metal-clad buildings are designed to contrast with the wooded hillside directly behind. The design is minimal, functional, industrial. Marketing manager Achille Montanelli’s father was the architect who designed it, and his aunt is Luciana Sala who, with Massimiliano Gaiatto, founded Met in 1987. Later he introduces his cousin and his border collie, who is lazing outside the design offices. “It is still a family business,” he says, although he doesn’t need to by this point.
The surprisingly pastoral feel that’s perhaps at odds with the exterior continues behind the factory, where horses and donkeys graze.
“They belong to Ire [Gaiatto] and Luci,” says Montanelli. “They did horse riding in the past and generally as a family we are very keen on animals. So Luci brought two donkeys, we have chickens, it’s a whole farm just there. The only production left here is eggs!”
He’s referring to the fact that whereas Met’s helmets were once manufactured here in Talamona, now they’re produced in Asia. This explains why the building looks from the outside like a factory and how there happened to be a spare room to house a wind tunnel.
Tenni is at pains to stress that despite Met’s helmets being manufactured in Asia, the brand can go further than most before mass production because it has the experience of manufacturing by itself. “Normally when we design a helmet the feasibility for the tooling is already done,” he says. “That’s our big advantage. Most of the brands send a CAD file of the design to the manufacturer, not the file that is ready to go to production.” This also allows Met to produce helmets that are low-bulk. Montanelli says: “This is part of the optimisation of the way we develop the product. The engineer and the designer are working together. We create it completely. Thanks to our FEA (finite element analysis) protocol we also define the productions specifications such as EPS density or carbon lay-up.”
Additionally, Met goes over and above with its quality control: “The CE standard doesn’t require this, but we do it,” says Tenni. “Every time there’s a box ready to be shipped out from our factories [in Asia] we do pre-analysis, we ask for a certain number of testing samples to test here in Italy. Only after having verified not only the conformity but also the alignment against the expected result do we allow the product to be shipped. It’s a bit like doing a new CE certification each time because we want to make sure of the stability of the product. That’s super important for us.”
Does Met ever get a batch that doesn’t measure up?
“Generally speaking we made a good selection of partners making our product, factories that were able to control the processes. We also have two QC inspectors in China who have worked with us for many years. When we moved manufacturing to Asia, we decided not only to visit, but really going in and working with them to make sure processes are stable. So we are really putting our hands into the machines with our workers there.”
How does that go down with the factory? “The manufacturers are happy to have us there. Not only is it a guarantee from ourselves but there’s an exchange of information and they might be learning something that they haven’t experienced before. The carbon cage of the Trenta 3K, this is something they didn’t know so well at the beginning, for example. It is the way to remain in touch in real life. You don’t do a product like this by staying behind a computer screen 10,000 kilometres away from the machines making them.”
The chickens may be the only ones still producing on site, but it’s clear the donkeywork – not to mention the horsepower – is still very much in Talamona.
